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More 2012: Election Day!

The Hill previews today’s elections: “In Ohio, a bellwether presidential state, Democrats and unions are pushing hard for a ballot proposition to repeal a union-organizing law. They’re expressing confidence they’ll be successful but the biggest victory out of that effort could be in 2012 if Obama benefits from the get-out-the-vote groundwork being laid for Tuesday’s race.”

KENTUCKY: “Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear is predicting he will coast to re-election over two rivals Tuesday, confident of becoming the second Democrat to win a U.S. gubernatorial race this year despite an ailing economy statewide and nationwide that's already proving worrisome to President Barack Obama's 2012 effort,” AP reports. “In a conservative state where voters routinely choose Republicans in national races, Democrats have lost only two governor's races since 1950. But Beshear's chief rival, Republican challenger and longtime state Senate President David Williams, is promising to buck a string of poll projections favoring Beshear and score an upset.”

MISSISSIPPI: The Jackson Clarion-Ledger: “Initiative 26, backed by the Colorado-based Personhood USA, seeks to provoke a court challenge to Roe v. Wade, the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that established a legal right to abortion. Mississippi is the only state voting on a life-at-fertilization amendment this fall. Supporters say the initiative seeks to end abortion in a state that already has some of the nation's toughest abortion regulations and only one clinic where the procedures are performed.”

“Voters in Mississippi could approve unprecedented restrictions on abortion when they head to the polls Tuesday,” The Hill writes. “A ballot initiative in Mississippi would redefine the word ‘person’ as it’s used in the state constitution. If the measure passes, state law would say that life begins at ‘the moment of fertilization.’ Supporters see the change as a way around Roe v. Wade, while opponents charge that the measure has implications far beyond abortion.”

OHIO: “The fate of Ohio’s controversial new collective bargaining law finally will be decided Tuesday, after months of vigorous campaigning that has drawn national attention,” the Cleveland Plain-Dealer says. Voters will decide whether Ohio’s 28-year-old collective bargaining law will be replaced with a new law that significantly restricts the bargaining power of the state’s teachers, police officers, firefighters and other public workers. The outcome also serves as a referendum of sorts on Republican Gov. John Kasich’s first year in office. The collective bargaining law known as Senate Bill 5 has been a key piece of Kasich’s agenda and the governor has been front-and-center in the effort to pass Issue 2.”

VIRGINIA: “The Virginia state Senate majority is on the line today as voters go to the polls across the state, but both parties will also be watching for clues that could help them in 2012,” Roll Call writes, adding: “Obama’s organization has been up and running in the state for months, and state Democratic Party Chairman Brian Moran said Sunday that the campaign has been very helpful to the party’s efforts this year. Kaine and Allen have crisscrossed the state since the summer on behalf of state legislative and local candidates… Republicans already hold the governor’s mansion and the state House. Winning the state Senate would give them total control and also begin an immediate push to pass a Congressional redistricting map that seeks to keep the delegation’s current 8-3 Republican majority in place for the next 10 years.”